"So she went without you at first? Did you know the whole time?" Not that Howard wouldn't know about being devoted to someone in spite of shifty behavior, but Rory's sounding nearly puppydoggish.

"I've been trying to figure out if there's a pattern that isn't super obvious, but you know, we didn't go over logger -loga - whatever, complicated math patterns in algebra one. And I gave it to Anwei and she couldn't make anything out of it." He furrows his brow and sucks on the inside of his mouth, frustrated again at how forces beyond his ken are wreaking havoc with his surroundings and frustrated with himself for being educationally inadequate to even figure out where to start on things. "And I went through to check if it correlates to really eventful moments in their lives and mostly, it doesn't. So I'm at a loss."

He raises an eyebrow at Rory's tone of voice at the last sentence. "This kid isn't just a patient to you," he says, stating the incredibly obvious.